The first song I delivered to my new publisher was the now completed waltz “Boxing.” I had made a piano-and-eight-piece-choir version of the song, singing all the vocal parts in the stairwell for extra reverb. I proudly marched into Paul Worley’s office to play the recording. He listened with interest, and some confusion. This wasn’t the “Purple Haze”–style piano mania he’d expected. And…how on earth did I manage to make this state-of-the-art studio sound as bad as my messy four-track demos? I hadn’t noticed, but for each of those eight harmonies, along with their doubles, I’d managed to record the air-conditioning unit in the stairwell sixteen times. It was a very noisy recording.
I spent the next year as a Sony/Tree songwriter, learning the studio from the ground up, nearly every midnight to eight in the morning. I learned how to align, demagnetize, and edit on the twenty-four-track analog tape machine, which I would put into record mode in the control room, then run as fast as I could out to the piano, bass, or drums. Often, John Painter would come add extra stuff. He also showed me the beauty of the Big Muff pedal for distorting the bass guitar. That seemed to help make up for the lack of electric guitars in my songs. I splurged on a string section from time to time, which either John or I would arrange. In that studio I wrote “Underground,” “Uncle Walter,” and “Missing the War,” and a whole bunch I’ve forgotten.
Even though it was 1991, the music world was still solidly stuck in the aesthetic of the eighties, and seemed like it would stay that way forever. If you ever come across some of Nirvana’s first early-nineties TV appearances, you’ll notice their grungy style is totally out of sync with the slick colorful TV studio sets they’re awkwardly performing on. In the eighties, rock bands might have to perform in front of fake brick walls with bad graffiti or with big-hair dancing chicks from workout videos ornamenting the shots. In pre–Kurt Cobain Nashville, a nerdy, cussing, and pounding pianist with no vibrato didn’t seem ready for that kind of prime-time scene. The pop-music world was still too slick.
Delivering my songs to Paul Worley was nearly as deflating as delivering them to my old publisher, Scott. I admired Paul personally and professionally, but he was so distracted by things like piano-pedal squeaks and the air-conditioner noise on the stairwell vocals. He rarely offered feedback on the actual songs. In retrospect I can see that he had the instinct to know I was onto something, but as a country musician, he didn’t feel qualified to comment on my brand of music. It was a whole other style with a lot more chords and notes. He did, however, feel qualified to comment on the production.
“What’s that distortion on the bass? Where are the guitars? Wanna put a little ’verb on those vocals?” he asked politely.
Meanwhile, Paul had signed my friends the Semantics to a publishing deal and he had a proposition. I could join the Semantics as their drummer, add a few of my songs, and Sony/Tree wouldn’t drop me. My music was proving utterly uncommercial, but perhaps it would add just the right touch to the Semantics. Plus, I’d get a fat record advance, because the Semantics were going to be signed to Geffen Records for a fuck-ton of money.
Anna was working two jobs and I was about to lose my income. If I agreed to Paul’s offer, I’d get a nice check, keep my publishing deal, and land some of my songs on a major-label release. If I declined, it was back to square one, waiting tables. Against every fiber of my being, I joined the Semantics in L.A. for rounds of meetings with their prospective producers.
I was out there for a couple of weeks and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t like the big name-dropping label guy we met at the Palm Restaurant, sitting at a table under his own portrait. I didn’t like all the producers’ sales pitches or their compulsory black turtlenecks tucked into blue jeans. I didn’t like the Semantics arguing over whose song had been the one to get the record deal, or who would sit “gun” in the limo. But this was the L.A. rock business, I guess, and I was beginning to wonder if they were all wearing diapers under those jeans. In truth, I was being a total sourpuss and I was looking for things I didn’t like—because it wasn’t my gig. I soon bowed out and the Semantics got a new drummer, Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey.
I was now twenty-four years old, with increasingly concerned shrugging parents, added debt on a baby grand piano, a tenuous publishing deal, some great studio experience, and, of course, that high school diploma. And I was soon to be a divorced man. Anna had been working multiple jobs, all of which she was overqualified for, in support of my failing music career. Prospects of a record deal were going backward, not forward. I was becoming a Debbie Downer.
During my time in Nashville, I found myself increasingly sluggish all through the day. I wondered sometimes if I had some kind of disease. I just couldn’t stay awake. I had no appetite. I’d often stay in bed well past noon, as there was no schedule to conform to. Now I was thinking about leaving Nashville altogether, but Anna wanted to stay. The strain of it all, and the obvious imminent diversion of paths, was becoming all too clear. We would be separating.
While in L.A. with the Semantics, I’d been told there was someone who actually liked my music, up in the Sony Publishing offices in New York. Her name was Kerry McCarthy. Feeling uncertain about my future, I gave her a call. She actually approved of my sloppy demos and she told me she wasn’t the only fan of mine in New York. She’d been passing my tapes around the city for a while. Had nobody told me this, she asked? She suggested I come up, meet some people and play some shows, and was confident that Sony New York would assume my publishing contract if Nashville didn’t want it.
Maybe New York was more my speed? I put a few things into the old Volvo station wagon and had awkward goodbyes with Anna. As I turned onto the highway at Broadway downtown, a familiar sound came over the speakers.
What is this? I know I’ve heard this somewhere!
Then I recognized that damn song. It was “The Winds of Change”! The country greeting card that had ruined my sleep way back when I’d first arrived in Nashville and was bedding on the studio floor! It was squeaking through the old Volvo radio just the way I remembered it! It was one of those moments that make you think life is but a dream.
That shitty song and I had spent time sharing a sleeping bag, and now I guessed we were traveling buds. We’d both made it through the bowels of Nashville, and as I was being shat out of Music City by way of I-40 East, I cranked it up and shook my head, choking back a few tears every hundred miles or so.
FROZEN ON A SUITCASE
I sat here on my suitcase in our empty new apartment til the sun went down
Then I walked back down the stairs with all my bags and drove away
You must be freaking out
THIS IS THE SECOND VERSE of “Don’t Change Your Plans” from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (Ben Folds Five, 1999), and it’s pretty much the scene on my last day in New York City, in November 1993.